Table of Contents

What is a plugin?

A plugin is a piece of software that displays Internet content that Firefox is not designed to display. These usually include video, audio, online games and presentations that are made in proprietary formats. Plugins are created and distributed by the companies that make those proprietary formats. Some common plugins are Adobe Flash, Quicktime, and Silverlight. For more information on plugins, see Use plugins to play audio, video, games and more.

What is plugin-container.exe?

Each plugin are loaded separately from Firefox in a plugin-container.exe process, allowing the main Firefox process (firefox.exe) to stay open if a plugin crashes. There are as many plugin-container.exe processes as plugins launched since the Firefox session startup. For more information on plugin crashes, see Send plugin crash reports to help Mozilla improve Firefox.